Paralleling multiple power converters is a common practice in the telecom and UPS (uninterruptible power supply) industries to increase overall system power capacities and to enhance system reliabilities by building redundancy. Typical examples of such power converters are single phase or three phase converters comprising inverters, rectifiers and DC/DC converters. Typically all the parallel power converters are gated synchronously and are tied together through isolation transformers to limit the cross current. Synchronous gating implies that the gate controls for the parallel converters are perfectly aligned.
Another way to operate the parallel power converters is through interleaved gating. Interleaved gating means that the switching patterns of the parallel converters are uniformly phase shifted, rather than synchronized. Interleaved gating has several advantages such as having reduced harmonic filter size, increased system efficiency, greatly enhanced control bandwidth (and thus improved dynamic performance), and potentially reduced EMI (electromagnetic interference).
Common mode current that circulates among the paralleled multiple converters or within paralleled converter systems that does not contribute to the output to the load is typically referred to as xe2x80x9ccross current.xe2x80x9d Both synchronous and interleaved gating control embodiments typically result in undesirable cross current with the cross current being more severe in interleaved embodiments. In ideal conditions synchronous gating does not lead to cross current, but in actual circuits using synchronous gating cross current exists due to mismatched circuit parameters. One way to reduce the cross current is by using an isolation transformer. In embodiments with isolation transformers, these isolation transformers account for almost one third of the system cost.
The existing techniques for controlling cross current without using an isolation transformer all suffer from certain inherent disadvantages. For example, using current balancers or inter-phase reactors for controlling cross current requires design of an inter-phase reactor. Such design cannot be standardized for arbitrary numbers of converters in parallel.
Another technique of controlling cross current without using isolation transformers is through use of xe2x80x9ccombined-modexe2x80x9d current control by treating two parallel converters as one converter, selecting the xe2x80x9coptimumxe2x80x9d switching vector, and adding a current balancer. The xe2x80x9ccombined-mode approachxe2x80x9d is not suitable for more than two converters in parallel because the modulator complication level increases drastically when dealing with more than two parallel converters.
It would therefore be desirable to have an improved cross control system for interleaved or synchronous operation of multiple power converters, arranged in parallel, without using isolation transformers.
Briefly, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, a cross current control system for multiple, parallel-coupled power converters comprises common mode chokes, local cross current detectors, local cross current feedback controllers and local converter controllers. Each of the common mode chokes is coupled to a respective power converter. Each local cross current detector is configured for obtaining common mode cross currents from a respective output line of a respective power converter. Each of the local cross current feedback controllers is configured for receiving the common mode cross currents from respective local cross current detectors, calculating a resultant cross current, and generating a local feedback control signal. Each of the local converter controllers is configured for using a respective local feedback control signal to drive the respective power converter in accordance with a coordinated switching pattern which may comprise either an interleaved or a synchronous switching pattern with respect to the other power converters.
In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, a method of controlling cross-current through multiple, parallel-coupled power converters comprises providing common mode chokes, each coupled to a respective power converter; and obtaining common mode cross currents from output lines of the power converters. The method further comprises for each respective power converter, calculating a resultant cross current by using the respective common mode cross currents, generating a local feedback control signal by using the resultant cross current, and driving the respective power converter by using the respective local feedback control signal in accordance with a coordinated switching pattern with respect to the other power converters.
In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, an integral choke assembly comprises a common mode choke and a differential mode choke. The common mode choke comprises a common mode core wound with at least two common mode coils and a differential mode choke comprises a differential mode core wound with at least one differential mode coil. The common and differential mode choke cores are configured so that at least one magnetic path is shared by magnetic flux generated by common and differential mode coils.